The Barre City Council is ardent on imposing their personal wills regarding trucks on North Main Street. It’s become a disturbing obsession that shows our council is out of touch. The actions on display at the meeting Tuesday prove as much. A majority voted for the return of truck traffic to North Main Street. Then, with swift prodding from the mayor, the council started the entire argument over again by plotting a ballot vote in March. These citizen representatives asserted they personally do not agree with the citizens committee report or the concerns raised by the citizens and businesses directly affected.

I find it ironic that the Granite City Council is hell-bent on not allowing granite hauling trucks down North Main Street. The commodity stone the city is built on and memorialized everywhere in town is granite. Yet, the trucks that haul that stone to the sheds must not be seen or heard on granite-laden North Main Street. With the amount of granite pieces laid into the new North Main Street, how did it get there? Delivered by passenger car?

Barre City was built on manufacturing, which meant good wages and a thriving community. We lost much of that manufacturing, and the community continues to suffer for those losses. Yet, the most important issue and fixation of the Barre City Council in the past two months — and for the coming months — is making sure trucks hauling commodities cannot be on the road that wouldn’t exist without those trucks or commodities. If the Barre City Council continues on this fixation, it may very well be putting out a strong message that Barre is not open to manufacturing business, which is what the community really needs.